The Land Conservancy for Southern Chester County is a non-profit charitable organization based in Chester County, PA. Our mission is to ensure the perpetual preservation and stewardship of open space, natural resources, historic sites, and working agricultural lands throughout southern Chester County.

Add your email address to get all of our recent blog posts

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Check Out TLC for the Bees HERE

In an attempt to streamline our online resources, TLC will be combining this blog with our TLC FOR BEES blog written by our apiarist, Dan Borkoski. As we merge the two blogs, and gear up for our 2013 Open Hive Days, I will post old content from TLC FOR BEES blog onto this blog--there is still time to check out all of the wonderful and informative beekeeping posts written by Dan HERE

Written March 28, 2013:

One hive down...

After almost two full years of enjoying our healthy hives at TLC's
demonstration beeyard, we finally lost one one of them this winter.
Winter losses are all too common for beekeepers these days (average
winter losses are somewhere the in the neighborhood of 30%), and there
are a number of reasons a hive might not make it through this trying
season of the year.

Without leaving sufficient stores on the hive (I'd say at least 50 lbs.
of honey), a colony could easily starve over the winter months. In our
parts, beekeepers usually harvest in the summer, trying to leave enough
honey for the bees to get through the summer dearth. We then usually
experience a modest nectar flow in the fall, and the beekeeper may or
may not do some supplemental feeding at that time to get the hive up to
weight.

Also, if there are problems with the queen in late summer or fall, there
might be a low population going into the winter, so that they have a
hard time forming a sufficient cluster to stay warm and move to where
the stores are in the hive. Bees don't exactly die from the cold, but
if there is inadequate ventilation in the hive, it can become damp.
Cold and wet bees is definitely a deadly combination. Add to the
equation stresses from parasitic Varroa mites and their associated
viral diseases, and the cluster of bees could already be dwindling
throughout the winter due to a really high attrition rate.

The hive we lost was "Hive A", which was previously a superstar, but
attempted to swarm last summer and stumbled a bit in requeening itself.
It didn't seem to have an especially high Varroa count, but honestly any
Varroa mites in the hive are not helping matters. When I found it dead
on March 16th, I didn't have time to do a full autopsy, but peeked in
and closed up the entrance to prevent the remaining stores from being
robbed out. There seemed to be a rather small number of (dead) bees in
the hive, which leads me to believe there weren't that many in there
going into winter. That may have been related to queen issues from last
year, that I didn't pick up on in the fall, or it may have succumbed to
a combination of other stress.

The fact of the matter is- hives die; though it's sad, it's the
beekeeping world we live in. On the bright side, the hives at TLC's
apiary have done better than average. Also, as long as Hive A did not
fall to a communicable disease, we can reuse all of the equipment and
drawn comb from that hive to give a new colony a real head start this
spring. Sounds like a post for the near future!